Welcome to Portland's hunger games! Follow this guide to the city's most promising plates, and there will be no sacrificing flavor in the new year.

Nothing—not black ice or blustering winds—will halt the hot chase of a food craving. Desire unbound means tearing across town on a Sunday morning to get one of just 20 fried croissants oozing heavenly Catalan pastry cream, or racing frantically through the night for a soup blistering with Asian soul.

The urge is unpredictable, generated by whim, childhood flashbacks, or the visceral yearnings that spring from a boisterous evening out. When it takes hold, nothing else will do. So, which Portland haunts deliver a lusty chocolate cake, greasy-good fries, or a White Russian so perfect you gulp it?

If you were to cross-breed Canadian poutine, dirty fries, and Mid-East inspiration, it would look like this food-cart addiction: a beautiful mess of curry-clad chicken, thick-cut fries, creamy hummus, and tahini, with help-yourself sauces from Yemen and Tunisia, each hotter than brimstone fire. Feel free to demolish inside the adjacent Base Camp Brewing.

This is what happens when an East Coast slice joint dressed in marble meets Rome’s pizza bianca (wood-fired bread at the crossroads of focaccia and pizza) and owner Duane Sorenson’s unstoppable obsession with the best ingredients (Olli Salumeria pepperoni... on pizza?). Grab a hefty “square”—crispy potato to anchovy-olive—and doctor with sea salt, shredded Grana Padano, and fiery chiles.

When do Tex-Mex chips and dips become something more—a taste worth commemorating in the year’s top 10? When the chips are fresh-cut and fried to order, the salsas (red and green) rattle with balanced heat, the queso makes an irrefutable argument for Velveeta, and the guacamole is simple perfection.

The bistro salad is reborn. Instead of frisee and lardons, butter lettuce rises like a Frank Gehry installation from a foundation of warm lentils and shreds of coriander-rubbed lamb neck, with a yogurt tang and subtle heat. Bites move easily from warm to cold, spicy to roasty, inspired to delicious.

Here lies everything you were denied in a Hostess cupcake: three stories of stout-happy chocolate cake, darker than the jungle and stacked with bittersweet ganache. The whole thing oozes salted caramel sauce. Wicked.